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BaselWorld 2017 Watches: The Stand-Out Winners

GQ ponders over the latest and greatest horology offerings from the big and small makers of note at Baselworld 2017.

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Image: Timothy Anscombe-Bell

GQ ponders over the latest and greatest horology offerings from the big and small makers of note at Baselworld 2017.

BaselWorld, the largest watch and jewellery fair on the planet becomes the centre of the horological universe for seven days each March.

This year’s show, which ran until today was a mixed bag of heritage-inspired reissues, clever calibers and outrageous offerings to suit all budgets and tastes.

But despite the less-than-stellar figures coming in from the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry (more on this later), the mood was upbeat.

As 145,000 collectors, retailers and watch geeks descended on the quaint Swiss city an hour’s train ride from Zurich, the 1,500 brands vying for their attention were all looking optimistically to the future.

As the dust settles over BaselWorld 2017, we look back on the past week to bring you our pick of the top mechanical watches due to hit stores later this year.

NOMOS Glashutte Club Campus

In our mind, the Club Campus in 38mm is the entry-level watch of BaselWorld 2017. Available in three sporty California dial variations that mix Arabic and Roman numerals, the piece is fitted with the brand’s in-house Alpha calibre.

It features NOMOS’s clean Bauhaus-inspired lines, a sub-seconds register at 6 o’clock and a healthy application of lume. The Club Campus is aimed at graduates and first-time mechanical watch owners and has a blank case back, ready to be engraved – a service that is included in the price.

Tudor Black Bay Chronograph Ref. 79350

Ok, so from a traditional tool watch perspective, the new Black Bay Chrono doesn’t make an awful lot of sense. The dial is pure Black Bay diver with the recognisable hour markers, plus snowflake hands and a depth rating in red.

Meanwhile, the tachymetre bezel and 45-minute chronograph subdial is motorsport-inspired. It’s an amalgamation of the kind of details we love from Tudor - which together felt a bit lost. But in the metal, this piece is undeniably cool. It has a serious, functional look and in an interesting move Tudor has chosen to collaborate with Breitling on its column-wheel manufacture movement.

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Patek Philippe 5320G Perpetual Calendar

Patek Philippe invented the first perpetual calendar wristwatch in 1925, and with 92 years of practise it’s no surprise they’ve got pretty good at it. Nonetheless, a reissue of this complication is big news and the latest iteration draws beautifully on the characteristics of historic Patek references, but with a modern 40mm stamped white gold case and curved lugs.

The 5320G has a cream lacquer dial with applied luminous Arabic numerals, day and month apertures at 12 o’clock and a moon phase and date dial at 6 o’clock. To top it off, there are both leap year and day/night indicators at 5 and 8 o’clock respectively.

HYT H0 Black

HYT are a young independent brand who create watches displaying time using coloured fluids; these are forced through a tiny capillary circling the dial, by a set of mechanical bellows. They’re consistently one of the more daring brands on the scene, and their new H0 collection is the purest and most wearable to date.

With a glass jar style crystal, the focus here is on the fluids, which are visible from both the front and the side of the watch. The bezel and lugs have been removed (the strap is now integrated into the case middle), making the watch seem considerably smaller than its 48.8mm diameter would suggest.

Grand Seiko SBGW 252

In big news from the fair this year, Grand Seiko announced that it would no longer be simply a high-end sub-brand under the Seiko umbrella, but would launch as an autonomous independent.

To celebrate this, the Japanese watchmaker is reissuing the first watch it ever created – and it’s a beauty. With the logo at 12 o’clock, the case design remains consistent with the original, but is now 38mm.

It runs the hand-wound 9S64 caliber, which is accurate to -3/+4 seconds per day. The version shown here has an 18K gold case and gold markers, although steel and platinum versions of the limited edition are also available.

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Fabergé Visionnaire Chronograph

We’re calling it now. On technical achievement alone, the Visionnaire Chronograph is the watch to beat for 2017. Having collaborated with Jean-Marc Wiederrecht of progressive movement makers Agenhor, this is the first chronograph to have all its indicators aligned in a central position for legibility.

This has involved a radical redesign of the movement’s architecture to free up space in the centre; and the result reaffirms Fabergé’s position amongst a new wave of horological heavy hitters.

Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Mil-Spec

Blancpain’s hero piece this year is a 40mm rerelease of the iconic Fifty Fathoms Mil-Spec diver. With its uni-directional rotating bezel plus SuperLuminova hands and indexes (instead of the original radium), this tribute model is the first Mil-Spec released since the 1960s.

In addition to its calibre 1151 (a formidable manufacture movement that Blancpain has provided to some of the industry’s finest dive pieces), the Mil-Spec has a functional humidity indicator at 6 o’clock. This is an original safety feature, whereby the upper half of the circle turns red should any moisture enter the case, compromising the dive watch.

Breitling Navitimer Rattrapante

The split-seconds chronograph is one of the finest complications out there – a true bastion of unadulterated functionality. So, when we heard Breitling would be launching a Rattrapante (double chronograph) fitted with their first in-house split-seconds movement, we couldn’t wait to get hands-on.

The first chronograph hand in red is operated via the side pushers, whilst the split-seconds hand is controlled by a pusher set into the crown itself. Like all Breitling calibers the B03 is COSC-certified for accuracy and the 45mm Navitimer case is available in steel or red gold.

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